Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Babysitting

Today has been another milestone in my grandad journey as I had the babysitting responsibility of looking after lovely little Molly. Sally is a schoolteacher and has returned to work and we have had to organise a family rota to look after Molly. She seems too small and precious to send to people we don’t know to look after her (and it is ludicrously expensive as well) so we are coordinating our diaries to include babysitting duties.

Of course I had been looking forward to this because here is my chance to have her all to myself for a few hours and I really did enjoy my day. It is a long time since I had played at Mary Poppins or Father Goose of course so I wondered if their might be some tips on the internet and I found this amusing site, http://www.superbabysitting.com/ and a journal at http://superbabysitting.blogspot.com/ which I read with interest but which only really confirmed to me that I didn’t need any help like this because I had done it all before.

Molly’s pace of development is now incredible and physical advances are coming fast and furious. Propped up by cushions she is sitting up for a few moments, when she is on her back she tries to raise her head to look around and when she is on her tummy she tries hard to move around. Her hand to eye coordination has improved and she is looking for things and searching out for them. One of her favourite playthings right now are her toes and she delights in reaching out and grabbing them to put in her mouth

Although five month old babies cannot express their emotions in the same complex way that adults do she is beginning to let us know how she is feeling with an extending range of sounds and noises. She likes company of course and when we do the silly things that we do with babies she is beginning to get the joke because she will laugh at funny expressions or faces and she gives them back to try and make us laugh as well.

Babysitting started at eight o’clock and it really wasn’t a chore at all and even the nappy changing bit wasn’t so bad. In actual fact trying to put stuff in the other end was a whole lot messier! In the morning we played together and then had elevenses, Molly had a little sleep and then when she woke I dressed her and we went out for lunch and I took her to the pub because she likes it there. I especially like it when the pub is full because I like to see how people react to a baby coming in. Before my grandad implant it used to really piss me off when parents brought babies into pubs especially when they sat near to me so knowing this I like to have a bit of fun. I deliberately walk through the entire place looking for somewhere to sit and looking threatening if anyone starts to look even the slightest bit alarmed at the prospect. I can spot them a long way off because they have that look in their eyes that says ‘please keep walking’ or they start to shuffle along the seats to take up more room than they really need. I really enjoy this part of pub visit.

No one needs to worry really because Molly really is exceptionally well behaved and just so long as she can sit at big people level and see what is going on she spends all lunchtime in a most contented fashion. After lunch we went for a walk to the local shops and I got to use the fancy pushchair again. It seemed strange to be doing this again twenty years or so since I used to do this with my own children. It is a brilliant pushchair, much better than the ones we used to have. It is so manoeuvrable and just seems to glide along the pavements. The old things used to rattle and have some difficulty turning around sharp bends especially down shopping aisles but this one is a pure delight. At one point I remember we had a double buggy for Sally and Jonathan but that was a nightmare to push around so we disposed of that as quickly as we could by selling it on to some poor unsuspecting victim. This was probably the worst purchase they ever made!

The afternoon shift went by very quickly and we repeated all of the things that we had done in the morning and at about five o’clock I was relieved and passed the responsibility back to grandma. It had been a good day and I had enjoyed it and am looking forward to my next turn in about four week’s time.

2 comments:

Hi Andrew, I`m glad you enjoyed your day babysitting for the lovely little Molly. My daughter Kerry is expecting her second baby, a girl, in 3 weeks time and I can hardly wait for my second time of being a Nana. It`s such a joy being a grandparent as we are older, wiser and far more patient I think than when our children were small. We also have more time and often more money to indulge them too! Hmmm....how anyone can manouvre a double buggy I have no idea but they deserve a medal...lol!